Welcome to Summer: Introducing a heat index for the longer games
Brian Beaudry
Thursday June 30, 2011
After a week full of not-very-surprising winners with some very surprising final scores, there’s been a lot of shifting in the power rankings, especially among the jumbled section between 0 and 1 standard deviation from the mean.
Rk | LW | Team | APPPE | Rk | LW | Team | APPPE | Rk | LW | Team | APPPE |
1 | 1 | JAX | 1.418 | 7 | 5 | CHI | 0.198 | 13 | 13 | PHI | -0.4 |
2 | 2 | ARI | 0.864 | 8 | 9 | SPO | 0.15 | 14 | 14 | MIL | -0.466 |
3 | 8 | CLE | 0.447 | 9 | 11 | DAL | 0.095 | 15 | 15 | TB | -0.534 |
4 | 3 | ORL | 0.364 | 10 | 10 | TUL | 0.055 | 16 | 17 | KC | -0.721 |
5 | 7 | GEO | 0.324 | 11 | 6 | SJ | -0.071 | 17 | 16 | IOW | -0.731 |
6 | 4 | UTA | 0.21 | 12 | 12 | PIT | -0.332 | 18 | 18 | NO | -1.13 |
Standard deviation rankings have been replaced by a heat index (not to be confused with the Miami Heat tracking page on another site), though they are still based on the standard deviations from the mean. It flows a little easier.
Level 5: Naga Jolokia (Ghost chili): Jacksonville
Level 4: Habanero: Arizona
Level 3: Jalapeno: Cleveland, Orlando, Georgia, Utah, Chicago, Spokane, Dallas, Tulsa
Level 2: Bell Pepper: San Jose, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay
Level 1: Ketchup: Kansas City, Iowa, New Orleans
Last week’s rankings are thrown in now so you can see where teams are going on a week-to-week basis. Obviously, horsewhipping a team 82-21 has some serious ramifications, resulting in five-position changes for both Cleveland and San Jose. Utah made a move back because their defense didn’t do anything to stop a Kansas City attack that hasn’t been much of a threat this season – the Blaze now have the worst defense in the league by my metric.
Meanwhile, the rankings seem to be fairly consistent with simply checking out the game scores this week – bad teams were rewarded for keeping it close with good ones and teams that beat higher-ranked teams jumped over them, except Georgia, who closed the gap between Orlando and themselves to just .040, down from .345 just a week earlier. Orlando’s significant third-place cushion completely vanished after one poor performance against the Force.
The VooDoo were the only team to have lost this week after scoring non-offensive points (teams that scored either defensive or special teams points were 7-1 on the week). Then again, New Orleans is used to wasting great kick returner P.J. Berry and Skyler Green’s efforts, having gone 0-6 in games in which they take a return to the house, five of those losses coming at home.
Onto this week’s predictions after another 6-3 week leaves me at 12-6. This week’s losses weren’t major upsets according to last week’s standard deviation system, though, so I’ll give it another run this week.
Week 17 predictions follow. As with last week, the number in parentheses is how much better (positive) or worse (negative) each team is in the Adjusted Points per Possession Exchange rankings.
New Orleans VooDoo at Tampa Bay Storm (+.596 APPPE): New Orleans loses because New Orleans loses. That’s what it does this year. Maybe the coaching change sparks them, but Tampa Bay played about league average against Jacksonville last week, so they’re still playing well as far as I’m concerned.
Pittsburgh Power at Orlando Predators (+.696): Two teams in freefall in the APPPE rankings in the past couple weeks. Orlando’s dropped .293 APPPE and Pittsburgh (thanks to that shellacking in Utah) fell .262 APPPE, the two biggest falls in the league. Orlando started from a higher position and I’ll still say they’re the better team.
Tulsa Talons at Iowa Barnstormers (-.786): Two weeks in a row, I’ve taken Iowa over higher-ranked, but perceived as overrated teams. Two weeks in a row, Iowa has failed me. No more, Iowa. Tulsa is not in the West Division, and therefore Iowa is incapable of beating them. Managing to give up 15 points in the fourth quarter despite your defense giving up a total of -6 yards in the period in order to lose to Chicago was a really impressive way to go, though. I’m not even mad; that was amazing.
Utah Blaze at Chicago Rush (-.012): By far this week’s most exciting matchup on paper – Utah’s No. 2 offense (.610 Adjusted Points per Possession) takes on Chicago’s No. 2 defense (.424 APPP). And Utah’s defense is awful enough to make up for the difference and then some! Again, in a coin flip, always go against the Blaze on the road. Always a good bet.
Jacksonville Sharks at San Jose SaberCats (-1.489): You know how Utah has the No. 2 offense and Chicago has the No. 2 defense? Well, Jacksonville has the No. 1 position in both stats. San Jose just went into Cleveland and got knocked to the ground, had their lunch money stolen, and their underwear got run up on the flagpole with them still inside – now the biggest bully on the block is coming into their house to finish them up.
Cleveland Gladiators at Milwaukee Mustangs (-.913): We all expected Cleveland to drop 82 on San Jose, right? The SaberCats had a .447 APPP on offense coming into the game against the Gladiators. The Mustangs? They’re sporting a virtually VooDooian -.751 APPP on offense. Can they break 20? Probably. Will they win? Nah.
Philadelphia Soul at Dallas Vigilantes (+.495): Fine, Dallas, I’ll stop thinking you’re incredibly overrated for one week.
Spokane Shock at Arizona Rattlers (-.714): Oh sure, I could say it’s because Spokane is undefeated against Arizona and the Shock are in the Rattlers’ heads – if Arizona doesn’t win this game, it will have no confidence going into a potential first-round matchup with the Shock. Arizona still has a big numbers advantage, but this is my column and I’m a Spokane fan, so the Shock get the nod.
Random fact of the Week: As the game drags on, the Predators suffer. In the team’s six losses, the average game has lasted 2:53. Their average time on the field in victories? 2:34 – and that’s including a game that lasted over three hours against Tampa Bay. In games over three hours long, they’re 1-3, scoring an average of 12.75 points fewer than their opponents per game. In games under 2:30, they’re 4-0 with an average victory margin of 15.75 points per game. This is something to consider as the average game is getting longer as the season progresses. They’ve also been participants in the shortest game in the league (win vs Utah) and longest game (loss vs Jacksonville), both at home.
NOTE: In last week’s column regarding the tiebreaker between Utah, Spokane, and Tulsa, I mentioned that Spokane was ahead due to the common opponents tiebreaker. I was incorrect – Chicago had not become a common opponent yet, since Chicago doesn’t play Utah until this week. Utah was, in fact, the team in the four-hole for the playoffs and remains there, now on the strength of the head-to-head tiebreaker over Spokane.
Brian Beaudry has been both an intern and a Director of Communications within the AFL and occasionally provides analysis of the league and the Portland Thunder as an Oregon resident. He maintains a blog, Wrong Way Sports, and you can reach him with research or graphic design suggestions on Twitter at @BeaudryPDX.